A Leaf

 A Leaf

A leaf, one of the last, parts from a maple branch:
it is spinning in the transparent air of October, falls
on a heap of others, stops, fades. No one
admired its entrancing struggle with the wind,
followed its flight, no one will distringuish it now
as it lies among other leaves, no one saw
what I did. I am
the only one.

-Bronislaw Maj
translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass